This 2011 update of Guidelines for the programmatic management of drug-resistant
tuberculosis is intended as a tool for use by public health professionals working in response
to the Sixty-second World Health Assembly’s resolution on prevention and control of
multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and extensi...
Commercial liquid culture systems and molecular line-probe assays have been endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as gold standards for rapid detection of multidrug-resistant (MDR) tuberculosis (TB); however, because of technical complexity, cost and the requirement for sophisticated laboratory...
Research over the past decade has resulted in the development of two commercial interferongamma release assays (IGRAs), based on the principle that the T-cells of individuals who have acquired TB infection respond to re-stimulation with Mycobacterium tuberculosis-specific antigens by secreting interferon...
Earlier and improved tuberculosis (TB) case detection - including smear-negative disease, often associated with HIV co-infection - as well as expanded capacity to diagnose multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) are global priorities for TB control. Conventional laboratory methods are slow and cumberso...
Direct sputum smear microscopy is the most widely used means for the diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) and is available in most primary health-care laboratories at health-centre level. Smear microscopy may, however, be costly and inconvenient for patients, who have to make multiple visits to healt...
HIV-infected infants frequently present with clinical symptoms in the first year of life. Without effective treatment, an estimated one third of infected infants will have died by one year of age, and about half will have died by two years of age. These treatment guidelines serve as a framework for selec...
For the first time, the elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (MTCT) is now considered a realistic public health goal and an important part of the campaign to achieve the millennium development goals. The 2010 revised PMTCT recommendations are based on two key approaches; lifelong ART for HI...
WHO guidelines for ART for HIV infection in adults and adolescents were originally published in 2002, and were revised in 2003 and 2006. New evidence has emerged on when to initiate ART, optimal ART regimens, the management of HIV coinfection with tuberculosis and chronic viral hepatitis, and the managem...
Malnutrition is the largest single underlying cause of death worldwide and is associated with over 1/3 of all childhood deaths. The objective of the document is to provide a summary of existing WHO information regarding the principles of identification and management of communicable diseases in malnouris...
This is fourth edition of Treatment of tuberculosis: guidelines, adhering fully to the new WHO process for evidence-based guidelines. Several important recommendations are being promoted in this new edition.
First, the recommendation to discontinue the regimen based on just 2 months of rifampicin (2HRZE...
